St Petersburg Archives - St Gregory's Foundation

Home visits stop Polina and family slipping through the net

Posted on 27th January 202627th January 2026 By Sarah.SGF

With support from St Gregory’s, our colleagues at Sunflower run support groups for young people living in children’s homes and those who have recently left. They have recently extended their service to offer home visits from a social worker to a few young mums who don’t yet feel ready to join their support group specifically for parents.

Polina* is one of those parents. She is mum to a one year old little girl, who she is raising on her own in a one room flat. Polina herself left home at 13 and was taken into care. Her older sister took custody of her when she was 16. At 20 she started living independently and very soon got pregnant. Polina is focussed on making sure that her daughter is fed and clothed, which she is doing well. Her daughter is physically healthy, but she finds it difficult to bond with her, and uses friends to babysit as often as she can.

Polina feels to anxious to visit the support group, so the home visits are an important way of keeping in touch. Our colleagues are teaching her to recognise how her daughter is communicating her needs. They are also helping Polina and other mums access help, particularly a nursery place for her daughter so that she can learn to socialise with other children. These are the first small steps on what we hope will be a longer journey, that will give Polina the confidence and the parenting skills she needs to break the cycle of disadvantage.

* Because of the family’s vulnerability, we have changed the name and appearance.

Supporting Maxim and his family

Posted on 8th July 20258th July 2025 By Sarah.SGF

Every family that comes to the Deaf Club we sponsor in St Petersburg has its own story, and that is not always straightforward. This was the case for Maxim (on the pink rocker) and his parents. His parents really struggled to accept his diagnosis, and visited several centres for a second opinion.

After his hearing was checked for a second time at the Early Intervention Institute, the family was invited to join the Deaf Club. Here, Maxim’s parents were encouraged to use the hearing aids Maxim had been fitted with. Maxim is a lovely boy, but he is hyper-active. At the Club we are able to show his parents how to attract his attention to the toys, or to other people, including to the sounds around him.

The family’s are just starting out on their path. They have recently discovered that Maxim has a genetic condition. Fortunately, our colleagues are able to support them as they adjust to the news. They will be able to speak to a psychologist with experience of working with parents of children with disabilities. They will also be encouraged to appreciate Maxim’s strengths at the weekly club sessions and will be able to see older deaf children who are flourishing. Without this support it would be difficult for some parents to see past the diagnosis, which in a society where disability is stigmatised, feels like bad news. We wish them all well.

Change to this year’s summer camps

Posted on 5th May 20255th May 2025 By Sarah.SGF

Mother and toddler daughter painting together

On April 20, volunteers from “Sunflower” headed to Dolbeniki and got to work cleaning up the site, including the kitchen, fire pit, and bathhouse. While there, they ran into a big problem: the small pond that had always provided water for showers, the bathhouse, and dishwashing had dried up. Drinking water was always brought in from a nearby village, but without the pond, there’s no way to get enough water for a group—especially families. Talks are ongoing with the site owners to figure out solutions. One idea is drilling a well, but it’s tricky because water layers are deep in the Valdai Hills, and finding a reliable source could mean multiple expensive attempts.

How Timofei is thriving thanks to our Deaf Club

Posted on 13th February 202513th February 2025 By Sarah.SGF

In St Petersburg, we support a Club for pre-school children with impaired hearing and their parents. Timofei is nearly three and has been a member of the Club with his mama for a few months. He is one of several club members who have additional needs as well as being deaf. Fortunately, because the Club is part of the Early Intervention Institute in St Petersburg, his family has been able to access support from an Occupational Therapist, which has very quickly made a huge difference.

A big thank you from one of our deaf club families

Posted on 19th December 202419th December 2024 By Sarah.SGF

Valentina Balobanova, who runs the Deaf Club we sponsor in St Petersburg, was doing her shopping recently when a woman stopped her. This was Nina, who used to go to the Deaf Club with her son Nikita. He is now twenty, but his mama still remembers Valentina and the Deaf Club. The meeting prompted her to write a thank you letter to Valentina, the other staff at the Early Intervention Institute, and to you, the donors who keep the Club running.

“I would like to thank the Early Intervention Institute and Valentina Balobanova for the great help they gave me and my son son. A few words about us. My name is Nina Nikitina and my son Nikita was born in 2004. A year later, I found out that he could not hear and he was diagnosed with hedrocephalic syndrome (which was cured). Well, it would be an understatment to say that it was a tragedy for me. My world simply collapsed. I was raising him alone, and I had absolutely no idea what documents needed to be completed, or what to do with all this. Somehow, by chance, while sitting in the hallway of the audiology center, one of the mothers told me about the Early Intervention Institute. She told mme that they have an excellent diagnostic service there, and run classes. After some time, I realized this meeting was an incredible grace of God. Having come to the center, our family found care and friends with the same difficulties. I found out where to go, what documents to fill out, what benefits I was entitled to, and where to get his hearing aid serviced. Basically, I learned everything I needed here. I have never met such warm people before. We didn’t miss a single class or event that took place at the institute. This became our second home. I want to thank the sponsors who make this possible from the bottom of my heart. You do an incredible miracle for us, such families, children.”

Sunflower: licensed to train

Posted on 27th November 202427th November 2024 By Sarah.SGF

Sunflower group standing with forest in the background

Quality recognised

Our partners Sunflower have come a long way since we helped them get started 17 years ago. For some years we have been helping fund them to run training courses for social workers and psychologists. Now the quality of these courses has been recognised. They have received a licence as a training organisation and are able to issue certificates for the courses they offer on effectively supporting orphanage-leavers and foster or adoptive families. Their teaching is helping to raise the level of care across St Petersburg, the Leningrad region and beyond.

Summer camps revived

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our appeal to restore the Sunflower summer camp. Their dining area is now usable again after being destroyed by fire in 2023. The summer camps are held in a very special place and Sunflower use their surroundings well. A walk through the forest to the local sand quarry is a highlight of both summer camps, for young families and for the teenagers.

Our colleagues say this about the children’s experience this year:

Transformative summer camps

Posted on 18th September 202414th July 2025 By Sarah.SGF

Each year our partners at Sunflower take two small groups away on summer camp. Six young adults who have just left their children’s home, and five families with young children took part this year. Although the beautiful rural surroundings are a wonderful escape from the city, this is not just a holiday. Everyone who takes part has been selected because they are prepared to work intensively on improving their relationships, on making responsible choices and on becoming more resilient.

Sunflower young people

May newsletter out now

Posted on 8th May 20248th May 2024 By Sarah.SGF

Our May newsletter is out now, including a round up of our news from Moldova, Georgia and Russia. You will see how your donations are being used to support Luisa, who found herself homeless in Tbilisi, and Vika in St Petersburg, whose mother died. We report on our colleagues who are teaching others how to adapt books for people with a range of disabilities, and providing the only therapy available for children with special needs in Călărași, Moldova.

An urgent problem we have this year is helping Sunflower recover from a fire at their summer camp base. This was caused last year by a fault at a local substation. Sunflower have managed to get the lights back on, and have also fundraised locally to replace damaged kitchen equipment. What they now need help with is transport both for their new equipment and for their volunteers, and food to sustain the volunteers as they make the site ready for this year’s camp.

Check out our appeal page if you would like to help.

Read the newsletter’s first story

Vika’s story

Posted on 8th May 20248th May 2024 By Sarah.SGF

In some ways, Vika is not typical of the young people that Sunflower help. She is actually an orphan – her mother died when she was 16 – and she is living in an institution until the paperwork is completed on the flat she is entitled to.

The majority of the young people in these institutions are there because their parents were not capable of looking after them. Sunflower has also recently started accepting young people who have grown up in foster care or an adoptive family onto its programme. What they all have in common is an experience of trauma. They are all alone in the world, without family to guide or support them.

Vika explains something of what life has been like:
“I have lived all my life in St Petersburg. Me and Ilya are twins. I ended up in a children’s home after the authorities turned up at home. We had a lot to deal with in our life, we were hiding from the pandemic, there wasn’t any money then, we often moved around, we lived in Krasnogorodsk near Pskov, where Mama got ill and died. Then Dad (she calls her step-father dad) started drinking. It was scary. It was a good thing that we ended up in a children’s home, there we get all our benefits, and they’ve even shown us a flat in our own district. That’s some kind of luck.”

Vika is carrying a lot of responsibility. She worries very much about her brother, who she says is depressed. She can’t imagine life without him. She finds it difficult and frightening to think about the future.

Vika is really benefiting from Sunflower’s individual counselling. It doesn’t just allow her to get things off her chest, but to put the events of her life in order and to think about them clearly and calmly. She also goes to the group meetings once a month.

Previous Story

Parent praises Deaf Club

Posted on 1st March 20241st March 2024 By Sarah.SGF

At first sight, it might seem as if not much is happening at the Deaf Club we sponsor in St Petersburg. Children play, parents chat. They get together for a sing-song and a chat. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, but something extraordinary is happening. Parents are gaining confidence, and children are learning new skills, skills they might not have had a chance to develop so early or so well because they are deaf.

Recently, the Deaf Club surveyed it’s parents. Grisha’s mum, Anastasia, responses show us just what the Club means to families.

What does visiting our club give you?

We go to the Club with our 2-year-old son Grisha. Coming to the Club with my child, I feel calm. I learn a lot bout child development. I can also talk to other parents and discuss problems. Grisha has the opportunity to socialize from an early age, being with both children and adults in the same place.